Freitag, 28. Februar 2014

"Shoposh of Fyr had not expected a duplicator slime attack while putting upthe new cafeteria sign in the castle courtyard." - illustration by Luka Rejec

Depending on how well nourished it is, a typical specimen of this rare creature has about the mass of a horse or more, and consists of a thick, slithering puddle of green slime interspersed with lots of eyes, bones, and sharp teeth. These eyes, bones and teeth flow around chaotically in the slime and make it quite an unsettling sight that can strike fear into the heart of the boldest adventurer.

The slime itself is of sticky consistency and can easily cling to walls and ceilings, normally crawling at a slow pace, but moving at the speed of a snake in short bursts if agitated. Sometimes, the slime drags along objects that were in its way, but due to the corrosive nature of the slime, even non-organic matter erodes with time. Organic matter is corroded after a short period and imbibed into the mass of the slime, with the exception of any bones, teeth and eyes, which stay intact and are simply incorporated into the Duplicator Slime's body system.

The Duplicator Slime usually takes the form of a puddle, but can freely change its shape, forming tentacles or other limbs, stalk eyes, gaping mouths full of teeth, and even spikes or other weaponry formed out of bones. Combined with its cat-like intelligence, it is perfectly capable of using these abilities to hunt and overwhelm prey, and can even manipulate simple mechanical contraptions like doors. It is not so much malevolent as it is curious and hungry, which does not make it any less dangerous for anyone unfortunate enough to encounter it.

It takes its name from its mythical power and seemingly insatiable desire to duplicate any being it comes into contact with before assimilating its essence. All the Duplicator Slime needs to do is to bring any part of its body into direct contact with the body of its victim. In a few short moments, it rearranges its shape to mirror the appearance of its prey, with any excess mass forming a pool at the “feet” of its newly-sculpted frame. The creature tries to make the likeness as accurate as possible, even trying to shape any equipment or weapons the victim is carrying out of bone fragments or slime. Of course, even if it matches the shape closely, it still looks like a horrible green mass of slime, eyes and bones, albeit in the form of an animal or person.

Even more confusing and hotly debated by scholars of the arcane, is the slime's capability to not only duplicate the shape of a being, but also all of its physical abilities. Many a warrior has perished when faced with his terrifying slime monster clone and a mastery of the sword that matches his own.

FOOLS get Cunning. Chose two special abilities: Exasperation (once per day, convince fate to intervene), Defiance (+1 when defying danger or death), Tinker (you can attempt to quickly pick a lock, pick a pocket, or disarm a trap), Wunderkind (once per session, you can use a special ability of any class).

Mittwoch, 12. Februar 2014

What's on the menu at The Last Resort, the tavern at the crossroads between worlds?﻿

(or just roll a d30 for a random magical food/drink)

1. Displacer Beef

Very difficult to eat piece of meat, often appears to be on the table next to your plate. Grants the displacer ability, usable once, for up to 4 days after consumption: -2 on all attacks on the eater for one turn.

2. Philter of Intoxicating Miasma

The more you drink the more people get drunk around you within a 10' radius. A soft yellow glow pervades the area, leaking from the imbiber's pores. ﻿

3. Invisible Soup

Does what it doesn't say on the invisible tin. 50gp a pop, tracking down those invisible asparagus and boiling all vestige of flavour and substance from it ain't easy you know. Makes your urine odourless, invisble and insubstantial.

4. Troll Cakes

Come in two flavours, sedimentary and igneous, and require a diamond edged cake knife to slice. Watch out though, the sedimentary ones might contain fossils that will reanimate in your gubbins, and the igneous type can cause the feldspar-intolerant to suffer from lava-belly. A rich and stodgy foodstuff, eat a slice of this and you won't want to move for a week and the weight will go straight to your waist. Beware of those cheapskate dwarven bakers who substitute concrete breezeblocks for the real ingredients.

5. Pixie Cocktails

All the rage at parties in the Despotate of Doom and among the fast set in the City of Dis, these are cocktails enlivened by decorating them with pixies impaled on a tiny plastic sword. Watch out. If you are proffered a drink with a pixie impaled with a wooden cocktail stick, you are being given a vampire pixie who will fang your face off and drink your blood once you reach the bottom of the glass.

6. Whine Gums

Gelatinous confections lettered and flavoured with various displeasures and whinges - such as 'Ennui', 'Weltschmerz', 'Disinclination', 'Peevishness' etc. No one really likes these and they are only bought as Christmas presents for relatives you don't get on with, probably because they bought a bag for you the year before.

7. PS

A nutritious but rather dull letter, served up boiled as an accompaniment to various more interesting dishes such as adverbs in aspic, mashed nouns and split infinitives. Can cause stuttering.

8. Multidimensional Borscht

Rainbow coloured as opposed to usual purple, and the flavours vary and mingle on your tongue, as the multidimensional beetroots transform into all the beet-equivalents they have evolved into in all the other planes of existence. Usually quite nice, but beware the possibility of your dinner transforming into a beard-snatching beet from probability seventeen-A, where a demented revolutionary concocted these demonic vegetables to drag the magnificently hirsute boyars of the Tsardom of all the Brassicas to their doom by drowning them in their favourite starter.﻿

9. Water of Thirst

Causes dehydration. The more you drink, the thirstier you get.﻿

10. Orcish War Bread

Puts some punch into your kick and fire in your belly.﻿

11. Obsidian Berries

Turn the eater as sharp and translucent as obsidian.

12. Lifenuts

Restore health, small chance they root themselves in intestine and a bloody mistletoe sprig starts growing from an orifice.﻿

13. Banana of Yellow

Turns the eater yellow, fingers leave yellow stains.﻿

14. Peach of levitation

A peach that levitates. Other effects unknown.﻿

15. Holy Sunrise

A sweet looking but surprisingly bitter tasting drink, which gives you a warm glowing aura of holiness that harms unholy creatures. Lasts until sunrise, when the aura is touched by daylight.﻿

16. Blue Mountains Gänseblümchen Sandwich

A sandwich made with Blue Mountains Daisies and goat butter. The goat butter must not come from Blue Mountains goats. Grants the ability to tell in which direction the Blue Mountains are and how long a goat would need to get there. Effects last until the sandwich has passed through your system.﻿

17. Death of Pigs

A delicate mustard spread made from the rendered soul of a pig that grants a +3 bonus to the next save vs. Death.﻿

18. Gwen's Carrot Soup

That’s it, the real thing, the reasons countless generations of children were forced to eat carrots, because “they are good for your eyes”. Eat this soup and your nightvision will improve considerably for up to 10 days.﻿

Made from chocolate and liquified shadows. A favorite with patrons arriving from the Frost Planes or Mount Chillblaine. In addition to making you all warm and fuzzy from the inside, it heals 3hp lost from cold damage, grants +2 on all rolls to hide in shadows/darkness, +2 on all saving throws vs cold, and +2 on all perception checks concerning things hidden in shadows/darkness for one week.﻿

21. Magic Tongue Tea

Available in different flavors. During 10 minutes after consumption, you can taste the properties of a magic item. The amount of tasted information is based on a perception check. Afterwards, you lose your sense of taste and smell for up to one week, depending on the magic item's power.﻿

22. Pancakes of the Gods

Served with your choice of lawful, neutral or chaotic syrup. Eater gains effects of Cure Light Wounds or Lay On Hands as if cast by the cook (depending on the cook's level). If consumed by a cleric, they grant +1 on any appropriate cleric ability or spell check for the rest of the day. They also taste absolutely delicious. Mandatory church donation not included.﻿

23. Volatile Veggies

This bowl of fairy vegetables has to be consumed very quickly lest it disappears from the mortal realm (DEX check necessary). If successfully eaten, they grant a +3 on checks dealing with fairy magic or illusions, as well as the ability to see and use fairy portals, passageways and paths until next sunrise. As a side-effect, the eater becomes very ticklish during this time.﻿

24. Death Cookies

Sweet, painless and instant death if willingly eaten. No effect if eater is not fully aware of the consequences and consenting. For all intents and purposes, your body is considered dead, but preserved at 0hp for up to one year and a day, after which it will rot away in a few hours. During this period, your spirit is free but cannot interact with the physical world. Magical healing of any amount of hp to the body by any means resurrects it.﻿

25. Geas Casserole

Serves two or more. Oaths taken during consumption of this filling food are binding. If any such oath is broken, any agreed misfortunes come true.﻿

26. Wheel of Fortune Cheese

Served with homemade bread. Allows you to re-roll your next critical miss/failure. Frequent consumption forces you to re-roll your next critical hit/success, too.﻿

27. Purple Pudding

The favorite dessert of overambitious magic-users and would-be wizards. Highly hallucinogenic. Grants the ability to read and learn an additional spell of one level higher than usual to any spellcaster. The spell must be read from a scroll, grimoire or learned from another spellcaster in up to one hour after consumption. Non-spellcasters gain the spell Detect Magic and can cast it as a level 1 magic-user. During the following three days, the spell can be cast once, then all understanding of it is gone. Until it is cast, you experience a hallucination that you fully believe (and act accordingly), at the GM's discretion, whenever you roll a 1 on any die (even on damage rolls etc). All special effects aside, Purple Pudding is often used purely for recreational purposes and is highly addictive if consumed regularly.﻿

28. Slow Jelly

A jelly cooked from black ooze and ochre jellies that hastes the eater and has a 1 in 1d6 chance of making him translucent.﻿

29. Favorite Food

This illusionary dish looks, smells and tastes like your favorite food, prepared to perfection in your favorite way. It has only illusionary nutritional values, so you will feel hungry again after half an hour. No refunds if you disbelieve it.

30. Hook Hors d'oeuvres

Consisting of vulture meat wrapped in a chitinous exoskeleton, these are served prior to the main course. Those who partake are able to communicate with other guests through eerie clacking noises which are incomprehensible to others.﻿

Montag, 10. Februar 2014

Here's what people have been saying about it so far:Very nice. I love that it's totally system-neutral, far as I can tell.﻿ -Adam KoebelThanks for the kick in the pants. -David TurnerHell, yeah! Nice! -Edgar JohnsonGreat looking map and really interesting dungeon. -Chris GeiselThis is awesome -Radek DrozdalskiCheck this out and sing him accolades -Noah StevensMy favourite thing about this (really excellent) dungeon is the editing. So very easy to navigate. -Alex Chalk

Bazaelahr are the most feared soldiers in the army of Ragadash, The Devouring Jungle, Demon Lord of the Hell of Black-Iron Trees. Part shock-troops and part siege engines, the Bazaelahr batter Ragadash’s foes with fist, tail, and stone. Outside of combat, their scales and skin are off-white. They climb as quickly as they slither across open ground.

Bazaelahr smash foes with their fists and finish them off with their powerful tails shaped like morning stars. If both attacks hit the same target, the Bazaelahr wrap their snake bodies around their foe and squeeze for an additional 2-12 damage. If a large stone is available, a Bazaelahr can make one ranged attack for 3-18 damage instead of its usual melee attacks.

The skin of the Bazaelahr is demonically tough and requires +1 weapons to penetrate. Bazaelahr draw strength from the blood of their enemies. If they have inflicted damage on a foe in a combat round, their torsos, arms and heads turn blood-red and their tails become a mottled red-white. For the rest of that combat round and the next, the Bazaelahr’s Armor Class improves from 2 to 0. If a Bazaelahr fails to damage a foe, they lose the Armor Class bonus in subsequent rounds until they harm someone again.﻿

Inspired by this artwork by Erol Otus, from Dragon Magazine #8, July 1977

Thanks to Keith Senkowski for digging up the picture and other interesting things from the early Dragon magazines.

Mittwoch, 5. Februar 2014

The first entry in this blog encourages you to put a dead cyclops in your game. (Of course, you can use most of the tables even for non-dead or non-cyclopean inspiration.)

Gender of Dead Cyclops (d2)

1. Female
2. Male

Special Features of Dead Cyclops (d12)

1. The eye is where the mouth would usually be. It has two mouths above its nose.
2. Four arms.
3. Second eye! (d4: 1. in back of head, 2. palm, 3. chest, 4. above normal eye, but closed)
4. Chitin skin, mandibles, insect eye.
5. It is slowly shrinking down to human size.
6. Its hand is pointing in a certain direction.
7. Only skeleton left.
8. Its eye has been cut out.
9. Its eye is glowing and can be harvested for magical energy.
10. Unbearable stench (a check is necessary to approach, plus save vs. poison or take damage)
11. Two-headed cyclops (bi-cyclops!)
12. The head is not attached to its body anymore or completely missing (might not obviously be a cyclops at first glance).

1. It is not dead, merely unconscious (please come up with something strange if you rolled a 12 on the special features table).
2. It is dead, but will rise as an undead cyclops in d12 rounds.
3. Something in its stomach is still alive! (d4: 1. human, 2. livestock, 3. monster, 4. zombie)
4. Strange mushrooms are growing all over its body. They contain cocoons that hatch 3d4 baby cyclopses.
5. A demon is currently trying to possess its body. Might be stopped by a cleric.
6. Dire vultures have spotted the corpse and will fight for their food.
7. The eye is still alive and looking at the characters. (If you rolled 7 on the special features table, the eye is in the skull, on an 8 or 12, the eye lies next to the cyclops.)
8. This cyclops is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. (No surprises.)

Dead Cyclops Belongings (d12)

1. Human hostage
2. Hood of shrinking (shrinks cyclops to human size, or other wearer proportionately), normal sized thieves tools
3. Large rock (contains valuable ore, dwarves might notice)
4. Herd of goats
5. Herd of demon goats (roll initiative)
6. Club, +2 vs cyclops, ogres and giants, can be used by a humanoid with STR 16+ as a two-handed weapon, damage like a two-handed sword
7. Ring of polymorph into cyclops (ring and cyclops shrink to human size if pulled from its finger)
8. Grimoire with cyclopean spells
9. Breastplate made from dragon scales, could be used as a shield, grants resistance vs fire (half damage)
10. Map to the lost cyclopean city
11. Bag full of rations (feeds a whole adventuring party for a week, then goes moldy) and waterskin full of wine (enough for a lot of drinking binges)
12. Cyclopean-sized mount, domesticated